Create an Advanced Research Experience with Passthrough Parameters & Other URL Parameters
Create an Advanced Research Experience with Passthrough Parameters & Other URL Parameters
Learn how to pass and capture more information by using parameters - or “params” for sort - on our DIY survey platform
Our URL feature allows you to add passthrough parameters, also called URL parameters, along with offering redirect parameters to your survey.
These help you to append information to your respondents, as you can use params to track them and then lead them to a particular response. As such, this technical feature helps you better acquaint yourself with your target market.
This article explains these parameters, their use cases and how they work in the Pollfish online survey platform; it also provides examples.
Understanding Passthrough Parameters
Pass-through parameters are specific tags that are placed at the end of a URL. They send data to a server and creating them is optional.
These parameters are part of a URL’s query string and thus are part of the URL-forming process. They can be seen by respondents, as they appear in the URL.
You can append as many parameters as you want to your survey link.
How Passthrough Parameters are Used
They are predominantly used to track and match a respondent with a certain response. In Pollfish, you append the user ID at the entry URL and retrieve it at the redirect URL.
By doing so, you can match a respondent profile from the Pollfish respondent pool with a response on a Distribution Link survey. This is the opposite of what you would do with third-party surveys, which are the surveys that get deployed through our massive networks via our Random Device Engagement method (RDE).
Other Uses of URL Parameters
This new offering has various other use cases for your market research needs. These include technical uses and research-based ones, that is, those that focus on understanding your respondents.
Here are other uses of passthrough/URL parameters:
- Passing along demographic data, storing it and later analyzing the results with ease..
- Passing, tracking and monitoring campaign IDs.
- Inviting and tracking respondents via email
- Segmenting your audience for market segmentation
Examples of Passthrough Parameters
The following shows you how passthrough parameters appear on your Pollfish surveys. Take a look to see their components and properties and how to add them to your own survey link.
Add some more:
Add even more:
Retrieve them with redirect params:
Redirect Parameters
You can retrieve your passthrough parameters through redirect parameters, which are also part of a URL. The value in your destination URL affects where and how the URL is redirected.
Building Passthrough Parameters on Pollfish
Params order and letters case doesn’t matter! You can define a parameter at the end of an entry URL by adding first the ? and then the parameter. For example:
Entry URL:
https://wss.pollfish.com/link/12345678-1234-1234-abc123456?userid=%userid%
You can append another parameter by tying them with the “&” sign. For example:
https://wss.pollfish.com/link/12345678-1234-1234-abc123456?userid=%userid%&campaign_id=%campaign_id%
Retrieving parameters through redirect URLs
In case you want to pass through the information with redirect URLs then you have to include the same parameters at the redirect URLs. For example:
Survey with a completed URL:
https://thirdpartyswlink.com?user=%userid%&campaign=%campaign_id%
An easy way to check the validity of your parameters is that the parameter name in entry url is the same with the value between the % symbols at the redirect URLs. For example:
Entry URL: https://wss.pollfish.com/link/12345678-1234-1234-abc123456?user_id=%respondentid%
Survey with completed URL:
https://thirdpartyswlink.com?respondent=%user_id%
Export the stored data.
All parameters and their saved values for each respondent are available at XLS export, sheet individuals.
Will the following work?
A third party software defines parameters $param$ or [param] or [[param]].
It will not. Try to replace all other symbols with the percentage symbol (%).
Creating the Best Survey Experience
While this topic hinges on the technical side of the market research process, the Pollfish platform is otherwise extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate.
You should therefore opt for a research platform like Pollfish, which also grants artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data and a broad range of survey and question types to customize your surveys.
It also features advanced skip logic to route respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.
Pollfish puts you in full control of your survey campaign — from targeting, to deployment method, to the questionnaire and how your post-survey data is presented.
With a research platform containing all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to set up research campaigns your way and retrieve quality data.
Multiple Selection Questions in Mobile Surveys (Updated)
Multiple Selection Questions in Mobile Surveys (Updated)
Multiple response, multiple selection or multiple-choice questions allow the survey respondent to choose one or more answers from set of provided responses of at least three or more options.
They are popular in survey design because of their convenience to the survey designer, as they can capture the respondent’s views and attitudes to the pre-formatted answers and provide a relative frequency or popularity of answers among a set of choices.
What should you consider about multiple choice in a mobile survey?
When designing a mobile survey, you must consider that the respondents have limited screen space before they have to scroll. So don’t overload the participant with too many answer choices in a multiple-choice question.
Answers to multiple-choice questions can be “shuffled”, or randomized in the Pollfish platform, however, remember that participants are allowed to select multiple answers. There is also the ability to anchor the last answer, by selecting “Shuffle but keep the last one fixed”.
NOTE: There are times when you do not want to shuffle answers, such as when asking for a numerical response.
You also want to limit the number of questions you ask the participant. Users tend to lose interest, “speed through” the survey or drop off completely if a survey contains lots of questions.
If you already have a list of answers, batch answers can speed the design of your survey, and avoid the hassle of typing individual answers one at a time. If you have the list on separate lines in an excel sheet, word doc, or similar, you can select "Add batch answers" to copy and paste your choices from your source document.
Advanced tip: If you want to copy the answers from a previous question you created in the Pollfish platform, select “Add batch answers” there, and the pop-up window will have your choices available to copy and paste.
2022 Feature: The Exclusive Answer Option
On August 10th, we released a new feature to enhance our DIY survey platform: the Exclusive Answer. This answer option is available only in the Multiple Selection Question type and as its name suggests, creates exclusivity in the respondent's answer.
This means that if you've designated an answer as exclusive, it can be the only one chosen, despite the question being a Multiple Selection. As such, it cannot be selected with other answer options.
Exclusive answers do not have any special visual identifier in the mobile tool, they appear just like any other answer, in order not to make the user’s selection biased.
Through this new feature, you can mark answers as "exclusive" by clicking the new icon, which is situated next to the "Add Media" icon. As such, on mobile devices, when a respondent selects this kind of answer, all other answer selections will be unselected.
The “Add Other” option provides the option of exclusivity; just tick the icon next to the “Other” text box. In this way, the “other” option on the left panel works like the “none of the above” option when you click on its relevant box.
The “Limit Answers” option still works as it has worked on non-exclusive answers and thus, does not apply to the exclusive answers.
Carried forward answers cannot be exclusive.
The Pollfish Survey Results Dashboard: Understanding its Functionality and How to Use it
The Pollfish Survey Results Dashboard: Understanding its Functionality and How to Use it
You’ll find the results of the survey you launched in the survey results dashboard on Pollfish. This page is your go-to source of survey data once the data of a survey is complete — that is — once all quotas from that survey are retrieved and the questionnaire has been fully filled out.
In order to properly analyze survey data and perform any sort of market analysis, whether macro or micro, you’ll need to have access to a clear and accurate set of survey results data.
Luckily, on Pollfish, the survey results page is easy to access, view and navigate. The data itself is of high quality, given the rigorous checks that the Pollfish platform facilitates to provide quality research data and avoid survey fraud.
This article delves into the ins and outs of the survey results dashboard, the page on the Pollfish online survey platform that contains all the survey results specific to the survey you run.
Understanding the Survey Results Dashboard on Pollfish
This dashboard is a page that contains all the results from the survey you conducted on the Pollfish market research platform, whether you ran the survey via the Distribution Link feature or randomly through our vast network of publishers.
The former method allows you to send surveys to specific people and on the specific digital properties you choose to insert your survey.
The latter refers to our Random Device Engagement (RDE) approach of survey distribution, which is a kind of organic sampling method that deploys the survey across a vast network and targets users where they exist voluntarily.
Each survey will have its own results page, meaning that each survey will have its own survey results dashboard. Whenever your survey collects all of its responses, it’ll be rendered complete and you’ll be sent an email prompting you to view your survey results.
Digging into the details of the survey results
The survey results dashboard displays more than just the statistics of each question you ask. Instead, you’ll find a granular breakdown of both the answers and the audience targeting.
This dashboard contains several options to view your survey results. You can view them in basic table form, which displays the question, the answers and their respective count and percentage of respondents who selected each.
You can also view your results in more visual ways, such as by way of a column chart, filled with colorful bars, or through a pie chart, best suited for visual learners.
The survey results dashboard also provides several export options. These exports present additional ways in which you can view your survey data. Whether you want to download an Excel file with your survey data or analyze your data via Crosstabs, it can all be found on this page (on the upper right corner).
Remember, each such page displays all the data associated with one particular survey. However, there is a way to view all completed surveys in list form. (More on this in the How to Access the Survey Results Dashboard section below).
The Contents of the Survey Results Dashboard
We discussed the major aspects of the survey results page in the previous section. However, there’s more to consider, along with all the specific subcategories that come with the contents of this dashboard.
The following lists all the contents that you can find on the survey results dashboard:
- The launch date and number of completes (on the center top)
- The option to get a sharable link to the survey (on the upper right)
- Exports (on the upper right)
- Excel
- CSV
- Crosstabs
- SPSS
- The survey questions and answers
- The count of each answer & the percentage of respondents who chose it
- The ranking (if it’s a ranking question)
- Answer visualizations (aside from a table view)
- Column chart
- Pie chart
- 2 ways to view results
- Actual results
- Post stratified
- Post-stratification is a weighting method to achieve a distribution equal with that of known characteristics of a population. It can be applied to all supported categories, such as countries, ages, gender and income.
- A robust data filtering system
- Filter the results based on a wide variety of demographic/location/device filters. This allows you to learn how granular segments of the population answered your questions.
- Time range
- View results based on the time they came in
- Screening questions
- See how respondents answered based on their screening question
- Gender
- Filter by gender (male, female, nonbinary)
- Age
- Filter answers based on various age groups
- Location
- Filter results by country, county, state, US census region and more
- Employment status
- Filter answers based on respondents’ employment status
- Any other targeting filters you may have added
- Time range
- Filter the results based on a wide variety of demographic/location/device filters. This allows you to learn how granular segments of the population answered your questions.
- Visualizations based on respondent categories
- View tables, column charts and pie charts on specific categories such as ethnicity, language, marital status, income and other audience demographics.
How to Access the Survey Results Dashboard
There are two ways to access your survey results. We briefly explained the first way in the section on Understanding the Survey Results Dashboard. To reiterate in further detail, once your survey is complete, you will be notified via email.
This email contains a large blue button with the call out to “View survey results.” Simply click on this button and you’ll be taken directly to the survey results dashboard for the completed survey in question.
Here you’ll find all the contents of the dashboard, as laid out in the previous two sections. You can filter the results, view them in any of the supported visualizations and export them in your file of choice.
You can also access the results dashboard by visiting the general dashboard. Just go to https://www.pollfish.com/dashboard/. Here, you’ll get a bird’s eye view of all your projects. All your surveys will appear here in list form, by way of the name of each one.
Notice that you’ll find the initials of the surveys’ creator(s) under each survey name. You’ll also see the date each survey was created, its number of completes (expressed as a number out of a preset total: 100/500), along with its status, such as draft or completed.
This page includes upper navigation in which you can view your list of surveys based on their status, for example, drafts, under approval, approved, paused, completed, etc. To view the surveys that have all their results in, click on the “Completed” tab.
This, in turn, will allow you to see a list of surveys that have been completed, meaning they have a survey results dashboard, which you can click on to view all your results data. By clicking one of these completed surveys, you’ll be taken directly to the survey results dashboard, which has all the information you’ll find by accessing it via email.
What You Can Do in the Survey Results Dashboard
By this point, we gathered that you can do five major things on this results page:
- View completed survey data
- Filter the data by demographics, time range, post-stratification and more
- Export the results in different formats
- Share the data through a link
- Quantify answers and draw conclusions
But there’s much more you can do with the survey results dashboard.
First off, you can conduct a survey data analysis and make observations with researchers, analysts and non-researchers and nonanalysts alike. After all, viewing and studying the data across tram members fosters a culture of data democratization.
You can conduct a market segmentation of your customers to categorize them into separate groups. Since your target market contains all the customers most likely to buy from you, it is often too broad to study on its own. Thus, you should segment your customers into smaller groups and personas.
Given that you can filter by demographics and screening questions, you can detect specific groups of customers and search for patterns in their behaviors and specific answers.
If you’d like to segment your customers even further, you can use your results dashboard to create an RFM analysis. An acronym for recency, frequency and monetary value, this kind of research method segments customers via these three customer behaviors.
In turn, market researchers and business owners can identify which customers are regulars, big spenders and which make one-time purchases. This allows you to distinguish between your customers, assign each customer numerical scores based on the three measures and grant an objective analysis of their value to your company.
Additionally, you can use the results dashboard to conduct research on your own organization, performing an internal assessment such as a SWOT analysis.
An acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, this analysis allows you to identify these four aspects of your company, department or project, ideal for strategic planning and reducing any negative qualities.
It’s easy to do since all questions and answer data are clearly laid out and available to view in different formats.
Moreover, you can use your results dashboard to complete a market trend analysis, an important overview of your industry. Specifically, it is used to analyze trends in a niche market or an industry at large.
A market trend analysis is a method of analysis of past and current market behavior, featuring dominant patterns of a market and its consumers. It relies on examining statistical data and recorded market behavior over a defined period of time.
Your results dashboard is easy to access and view in different visualization, making it easy to compare market trends over a long period of time.
Finally, you can use your survey results dashboard to form a general customer behavior analysis.
This grants you insight into a swath of customer behaviors and their motivations, allowing you to understand how they tick and the reasons behind their purchases. You can delve deeper by studying their preferences among brands, brand loyalty and much more.
All in all, you can partake in numerous market research projects and perform various analyses thanks to the data filtering and visualization options available on the Pollfish results dashboard.
Getting the Most from Your Survey Results
Having access to a robust dashboard of survey results is key to performing a market research campaign and understanding your customers, or any population you seek to study, whether its your employees, students, readers, etc.
The Pollfish online survey platform is keen on optimizing both the respondent and researcher experience. Thus, it is designed to satisfy and ease the use of both parties.
Researchers can leverage a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard, which they can view in any way they please, whether it’s by studying the answers of certain demographics or viewing them in specific formats.
You should therefore opt for a platform like Pollfish, which offers artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data and offer a broad range of survey and question types.
It also features advanced skip logic to route respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.
As a DIY survey platform, Pollfish puts you in full control of your survey campaign — from targeting, to deployment method, to the questionnaire and how your post-survey data is presented.
With a research platform containing all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to set up research campaigns your way, reap quality data and gauge consumers of any audience via a granular dashboard of survey results.
Discover the robust survey results dashboard on the Pollfish platform, a results page allowing you to view, filter and export survey results as granularly as you wish for a sublime research experience.
New Question Type: Drill Down Questions to Improve Respondent Experience and Data Quality
New Question Type: Drill Down Questions to Improve Respondent Experience and Data Quality
Drill down questions are useful for instances in which you want to ask your target market or target population a question that includes multiple options. This does not necessarily entail a large number of multiple choice answers, but rather multiple prompts that relate to one question topic.
This allows you to include various inquiries into one question, without needing to worry about the relevance of the questions. As such, you can dig deeply into one topic with one question, by adding multiple relevant follow-up questions.
This method is not simply useful to collect better data, but to improve the survey respondent experience. 49% of consumers have left a brand in the past year due to poor customer experience. You should therefore always strive to provide a good CX for your customers.
Given that you’ll be largely studying your customers, surveys grant you an opportunity to give your customers a good CX on yet another touchpoint.
This article explains drill down questions, their importance, examples and how they appear on the Pollfish online survey platform.
Understanding the Drill Down Question
The drill down question is used to help respondents choose from a list of options, with each option existing as a kind of prompt. Usually, respondents answer the prompt by selecting from a drop-down menu.
That is to say that the drill-down is not a primary question with follow-up questions, but a set of dropdown selection menus hierarchically defined.
As such, the drill-down question is a question type used to narrow down a respondent’s choice from a broad to a specific answer. Therefore, it involves multiple prompts, which exist as relevant follow-up questions, each presented with its drop-down menu.
With each following question (or prompt), the topic under investigation, i.e., the one that is originally asked about, gets more and more narrow. In this way, the researcher gets to drill down on the topic, hence the name of this question type.
First, your respondents choose from a general drop-down list. Then, based on their answers, they are presented with specific follow-up prompts with lists as a means to “drill down” their answer. In this way, the respondent is providing data that starts at the general level and becomes more specific with each follow-up prompt or list.
For example, you could first have respondents select a car brand, then they would select a car model and finally, they would choose the year of the car’s manufacture.
The Importance of the Drill Down Question
This kind of question is important for a variety of reasons.
First off, the drill down question type should be used when you need your survey participants to respond to multiple interdependent questions. This is important as it not only organizes and sets up your questionnaire in a more logical (and relevant) way, but it also allows you to ask multiple relevant follow-up questions right under one question.
This will ward off boredom and frustration from repetition, as some respondents may grow tired of seeing what’s essentially the same topic being asked of them continually in the questionnaire.
Instead, you can group that topic under one question, by setting up different follow-up drop-down lists (or prompts) in it.
In addition, you’ll be able to evade different types of survey bias, namely the survey scope error. This bias arises when a survey does not include important items required to fully answer the topic of study. Failing to ask important questions on certain aspects or sub-topics will result in respondents giving incomplete or inaccurate answers.
This will tarnish your survey campaign and your overall research study. While the survey scope error may appear daunting to avoid, it can be done with drill down questions, as they allow you to include a variety of follow-up questions relevant to the main topic at hand and its various subtopics.
This makes it easy to include all essential survey questions while curbing the length of the survey. Regarding the latter, this is possible, as these follow-up prompts exist as drop-down lists, which are easy to select.
What’s more, is that these questions are essentially another major way to include relevant follow-up questions. Thus, they can be used as an alternative to advanced skip logic. This survey method routes respondents to proper follow-up questions, based on their answers to a previous question.
Drill down questions grant you the same capability, the only difference being adding follow-up lists per a single major question. Skip logic instead redirects respondents to new questions, those that are not bound under one main question.
The drill down questions also make for a more engaging survey experience for your respondents, who, as aforementioned, are usually going to be your customers.
Rather than setting up questions in a boring multiple-choice setup, drill down questions to create a more visual and simple way to answer a question.
They are also more inclusive in terms of answer options, as you can add a long list of answers per each drop-down menu in each follow-up prompt. Because of this, these questions help you build customer convenience while gathering critical data on consumer preferences.
All in all, this new question type will provide you with a strong means to collect relevant survey data and improve your survey respondent experience.
Drill Down Questions on Pollfish
This question type brings a new interface to the Pollfish platform. That’s where drill down questions can play a pivotal role.
To reiterate, the drill down question type helps you gain more in-depth data from your respondents. An advanced question type, it is powered with built-in logic to allow you to retrieve answers quickly.
Instead of presenting respondents with a long list of options, drill down questions include a functionality that lets you narrow down the options through a step-by-step way, or rather, by way of multiple prompts.
How to Use Drill Down Questions on the Pollfish Platform
To use this kind of question, you must first go to the questionnaire section of the dashboard. On the left-hand panel or by using the “Add new question” button, choose the Drill Down question option.
Pollfish offers 2 ways to add the drill down values, either by uploading from an Excel/CSV file or by adding the values manually. Pollfish demands the values to be added in a row-like format delimited by columns (in the Excel) or by commas (in CSV or manual).
Importing via Excel or a CSV file
- In the Excel editor, add a column for each dropdown to add to the question. The 1st row must contain the dropdown labels, which you can later edit if needed on the questionnaire page. In the following example, the drill down question will contain 3 dropdowns, narrowing down from the country level to the city one.
- Then, include rows that represent each possible combination of the dropdown values. Some of the values can be repeated, eg. in the following screenshot. For example, since we need to add different states and cities of France, the country category “France” is repeated 4 times.
- (Important) Consider checking the structure of the file before uploading, as any malformed rows (containing a fewer number of values than the number of labels) will result in an error.
- You can save the file as an Excel or CSV and then upload it to the Pollfish questionnaire. Click on the drill down question.
- Select to upload via the “Upload a file with pre-filled options of drill down” and proceed with uploading the file you previously created.
- Once uploaded you can both check the number of different unique values added per dropdown and preview the flow of the question.
- Once the survey has gone running, the drill down question dropdown values cannot be edited, only the labels are editable.
Manually adding values
You can also manually add all the possible combinations for the hierarchy of dropdown levels. In the screen opened you should enter the labels of the dropdowns and the values that they will contain.
Using logic and recall with the drill down question
Display logic based on a drill down question allows you to hide or display questions based on any level or combination of levels, for example, create a logic rule based on the exact car brand and model type to display a follow-up question, like in the example below.
You can also recall the drill down answer in a following question.
Drilldown results & exports
Once responses have been collected at the survey, the drill down question has the format of a single selection question, where the count and percentage of responses are displayed for each combination of levels provided. You can also switch between the tabular, bar chart view, or pie chart view for the answers.
Curious about how to build your ideal survey? You can learn how to make your own survey in just three easy steps on the Pollfish online survey platform.
The Benefits of Drill Down Questions
This new question type has various advantages along with their aforesaid importance. Take your survey to the next level by applying this question type to one or more questions. But first, let’s learn about its specific benefits.
The following lays out the advantages of using drill-down questions:
- Allows you to get very specific customer data under just one question
- This is because each follow-up prompt gets more specific, based on the answer to the previous one.
- Easy to answer
- It aids the respondents in selecting their answer option without going through a long list of answers.
- Great for those with short attention spans
- This question avoids using long and highly detailed answers.
- Garners highly refined responses
- It allows you to add multiple follow-up prompts, allowing you to get to the nitty-gritty of any subtopic or aspect you’d like to explore.
- As the respondents get to select every option based on previously listed questions, the drilled down answers come out to be highly refined.
- Creates an engaging survey experience
- This question provides more stimulation by getting respondents to answer in a kind of step-by-step way that’s slightly more visual.
- Uncovers more customer personas
- Given that interrelated questions occur at every level, you can use this question type to uncover your customer personas in further detail.
- Speeds up the survey process
- With built-in logic, this question type allows you to reap answers more quickly from respondents and avoid having to apply logic yourself.
Forming the Ideal Survey
Virtually no respondent wants to answer long and detailed questions. That’s where the drill down question comes in, allowing you to collect drilled down information without boring or tiring your respondents with long-winded questions.
Instead, you can quicken the process of answering surveys by helping respondents find the relevant answers they’re looking for, without going through a single endless list. As such, form your ideal survey by opting for an online survey platform that offers this question type.
But there’s more when it comes to choosing the right online survey provider. You should go for a platform that enables you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.
The former works by way of Random Device Engagement, which targets and gathers respondents where they voluntarily exist in different digital channels. It distributes surveys randomly, across a wide network of digital properties. This includes websites, mobile sites and mobile apps, making for a randomized survey deployment.
The latter feature (Distribution Link) empowers you to send your survey to specific customers, instead of only deploying them across a vast network. Thus, you can target respondents you know to be your customers via email and social media or drop your link across digital channels of your choosing, such as landing pages, homepages, etc.
It is also important to use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space and no one wants to take surveys in a shoddy mobile environment.
The online survey platform you opt for should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, offer a broad range of survey and question types and disqualify low-quality data.
With an online survey platform with all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to form your ideal survey, one that garners key customer data while providing a good CX.
The New Bipolar Question: A Matrix Question Type
The New Bipolar Question: A Matrix Question Type
We’ve recently released a new version of the Matrix question type called the Bipolar Question, which is a specialized variation of this question type. With this new functionality, you can help respondents answer by including dual-labeling, as this variation includes a scale — the Bipolar Scale.
Each end of the Bipolar scale is marked to show its two extremes. This way, respondents will quickly determine which side has the more positive answers and which leans on the negative ones. In addition, they'll understand how each side of the scale of answer options differs by understanding which extreme it falls under.
A variation of the Matrix question, it too relies on a table or grid when asking about the same set of characteristics for multiple items, just like you would expect with a Matrix question.
However, this version is distinct in that it displays two extremes of a scale that are set by the researcher. This variation is a more advanced version of the Matrix questions you’re used to seeing and the opposite of the Likert Scale Matrix variation.
This article explains the new Bipolar variation of the Matrix question type, its importance, examples, how it differs from the Likert variation and how to use it on the Pollfish platform.
Understanding the Bipolar Question Variation
The Bipolar question is a kind of variation of a Matrix question, which is also called a Matrix table question. As such, you’ll need to have a firm understanding of this main question type before undertaking any of its variations.
What is a Matrix Question?
This question type utilizes a table or grid as a means to present the questions and answer options. It is typically used to ask about the same set of characteristics for multiple items, such as how often a respondent uses a product or service.
The question itself is set up as a table or a grid to bring the information together for the respondent in an easily understandable way.
Matrix table questions allow you to combine a set of questions with the same answer options. This is especially useful when you seek to ask multiple questions that can be rated on the same scale, meaning, they can all be measured with the same answer options that are displayed on a scale. For example, on a scale of extremely rarely to extremely frequently.
The Bipolar Matrix Question Type
As aforesaid, this question type is a variety of the Matrix question. It takes essentially the same layout as a Matrix question and has one defining characteristic: a marked display of two extremes of the table or scale.
Given the emphasis on the two opposites of the scale, this scale is called the Bipolar Scale, granting this variation to its name.
The researcher (or platform user) is in charge of setting the two extreme ends of the scale and making them noticeable. This is done by assigning each end with a name. For example:
in the following question: “How would you rate this sneaker?” the two extremes would be marked by the words: “extremely painful” and “extremely comfortable.”
Each descriptive word would be displayed at the opposite ends of the scale. This shows respondents where each answer option is relative to the two extremes.
How the Bipolar Question Works
Respondents select a point between the two extremes, with the point being an answer option in the scale. These points can also be labeled as a means of further helping guide respondents through the Bipolar Scale. They can have labels that match the type of intensity of the point.
For example, they can be labeled as “very little” to “none at all.” Other options include using the same labels on each side of the scale, with a single point for neither or neutral, such as “very little” and “very much” or “highly unlikely” and “highly likely” on each side.
The Importance of the Bipolar Question Variation
This Matrix question variation is important for several reasons.
First off, it is useful to include in your survey if you seek to measure consumer preferences and opinions based on intensity. It is especially important if you want to measure your respondents’ views on something regarding your brand based on two opposite extremes.
This is crucial, as many times, shopping habits, sentiments and customer behavior can all be whittled down into two main categories, or fall somewhere in between two main categories. These often exist as two opposites that you can study your customers with, based on what they choose in between or at the polar ends of the two extremes.
Secondly, this question type is important, as it helps guide your respondents on how to answer the question, based on how each option is oriented. As such, they’ll better understand which extreme their answer is associated with.
They’ll also understand how neutral their answers are, or whether they slightly gravitate towards one end or the other. By helping your respondents better understand under which extreme their answer lies, you’ll also reap more accurate responses, which will provide you with key data for decision-making.
Lastly, this kind of question variation creates a more visual and engaging survey experience. Due to its helpful nature in helping your respondents choose an answer, it makes a more lively and enjoyable survey experience.
Not only will this speed up the survey process, which will bring you faster insights, but it will also improve your brand reputation if you include your brand name or specific product or service in the question itself, or somewhere else in the survey.
All in all, the Bipolar question variation is critical for various reasons concerning survey user experience, providing more accurate answers, getting speed to insights and improving your overall brand experience.
The Bipolar Question Type on Pollfish
You can set up the Biopolar Scale to your liking by choosing how you label the two extreme ends and the points on the scale.
The following displays how this new question type looks on the Pollfish platform:
How the Bipolar Question Type Differs from the Likert Question Type
Both of these question types are variations of the Matrix question. As such, the Matrix question type exists as the parent question category, while Bipolar and Likert Scale variations are the more granular child categories.
Both categories therefore can use a scale of 5-7 questions and both use a Matrix table, but their distinct version of it.
Let’s explore how they differ from each other in the following table:
| Bipolar Scale Matrix Question | Likert Scale Matrix Question | |
| What’s displayed | Two extremes of a scale in a table format. | A list of statements as rows and scale points as columns in a table format. |
| Question options | Respondents select a point between the two extremes. | A single answer, a multiple answer, a drop-down list, or a drag and drop. |
| Answer Labeling | Because the two extremes are marked, labeling individual points is optional. | Each option always has a label. |
| Answer Options | Respondents can provide just one answer. | Respondents can provide more than one answer. |
How to Use the Bipolar Matrix Question Variation on Pollfish
Creating this question type and using it on the Pollfish market research platform is easy to do. First, go to the questionnaire section of your survey. Then, select your question type in the lefthand panel.
Then choose from the following options to set up your Bipolar Scale:
- There are 2 extreme-scale values for each statement.
- Select the length of the scale points and add the number of labels, as you will have to choose how to represent the Bipolar question to your respondents.
- Use rows and columns( horizontal and vertical cells or use the Sliders.
Afterward, choose from the available settings for your Bipolar Matrix question:
- The number of statements, AKA, rows has no restriction.
- Scale points, the radio buttons available also have a few restrictions and conditions:
- Include up to 20 for Horizontal and Vertical cells.
- Use up to 11 for the slider.
- Use up to 20 statements for all forms.
- Labels, which are optional and go above the scale points. They do not have to be the same number as the scale points.
Don’t forget to type in your question and have your answer options (the points) you seek to fill in.
Next, consider how we implement this question type:
- In the questionnaire
- Using advanced skip logic
- On mobile and desktop versions
- On the results page
- In exports, BQ and file exports
- With Survey Translations
Finally, review your question and answer options (the points) and add more Bipolar or other questions to your questionnaire.
Curious about how to build your ideal survey? You can learn how to make your own survey in just three easy steps on the Pollfish online survey platform.
Setting Up the Ideal Matrix Table
You can now use the Pollfish platform to create a specialized Matrix question: the Bipolar question type. A variation of the Matrix question, it helps you create a more custom question format that guides respondents on which extreme their answer falls under.
Giving you the chance to fish out more accurate answers while creating a more engaging survey experience, using this question variation is a must. That’s why it is equally important to select a strong online survey platform that facilitates creating this question type.
But there’s more when it comes to choosing the right online survey platform. You should choose a survey provider that enables you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.
The former method works via Random Device Engagement, which targets and gathers respondents where they voluntarily are across different digital channels. Thus, it distributes surveys randomly, across a wide network of digital properties. This includes websites, mobile sites and mobile apps, making for a randomized survey deployment.
The latter method, which uses the Distribution Link feature empowers you to send your survey to specific customers, instead of only deploying them across a large network. This enables you to target respondents you know are your customers via email and social media as well as adding your link across digital channels, such as landing pages, homepages, etc.
It is also important to use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space and no one wants to take surveys in a shoddy mobile environment.
The online survey platform you opt for should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, offer a broad range of survey and question types and disqualify low-quality data.
With an online survey platform that offers all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to form your ideal survey and easily set up and use the Bipolar Scale question variation.
Sending and Targeting Surveys to Anyone With the Distribution Link
Sending and Targeting Surveys to Anyone With the New Distribution Link
The Pollfish platform just got much more powerful. We now offer another major way to deploy surveys so that researchers can target the exact people they seek to study for all of their research needs.
We’re thrilled to introduce the Distribution Link, a feature that completes the Pollfish survey distribution and deployment functionality. It is currently FREE to use this DIY market research tool.
With this latest feature, you can target respondents in the most precise way: via their identities instead of their demographics, location, and other screening filters you’ll find on our platform.
This feature fortifies your survey outreach process, arming you with the knowledge of specific respondents. As such, it provides a powerful addition to market research techniques and gives you the full Pollfish experience.
This article explains the Pollfish Distribution Link feature, so that you can apply it to all your unique respondent targeting needs.
Understanding the Pollfish Distribution Link Product Feature
The Distribution Link is a new product feature for distributing your surveys to the exact targets you seek to complete them. It serves as an alternative to our current survey deployment method: that of random device engagement sampling or RDE sampling.
With RDE sampling, the Pollfish platform launches your survey to hundreds of thousands of highly-trafficked websites, mobile sites and apps, prompting random internet users to take your surveys. Of course, only those who qualify to take it based on your screening section are granted entry into the survey.
This way, only members of your targeted population will participate in your survey and they are targeted in a completely randomized way. While this strategy is useful and efficient, bringing you quality data and speed to insights, it was rather incomplete.
This is not to say that you couldn’t extract high-quality data from the Pollfish platform through its survey fraud protection and quality checks system or that you couldn’t target people based on demographics, psychographics, location, etc via the RDE approach. In fact, that is exactly what the RDE method was built for: quick insights from a vast and random sampling pool.
While this is an innovative approach, it was incomplete in that it didn’t allow you to send your survey(s) yourself to specific individuals. But now you can with the Distribution Link feature.
The Distribution Link allows researchers to send their survey(s) themselves to their exact targets, actual individuals rather than a random pool. But it can do much more.
Since this feature is a link, you can send it through various means and reap various benefits.
Distribution Link Facts, Cost and How to Add it to Your Survey Campaign
The researcher can create a draft and instead of distributing it via the Pollfish network, they can generate a link that potential respondents can click on to reach the survey. As such, there will be no checkout page, but a link that researchers can share across mediums.
The first release is available for all accounts for free.
The following explains how to apply the Distribution Link feature to your survey:
- Click on ‘’Create new survey’’ on the Pollfish platform.
- Then, select the option of “create a link” to share the survey.
- Select to start through a template or from scratch.
- You’ll then be directed to the Questionnaire page, where you can select your intended respondent demographics and other qualifications.
- You can also add screening questions that will allow or bar entry to the survey to respondents who answer them in a particular way.
- After filtering options in the Questionnaire page, Then you’ll be taken to the Questionnaire page, where you can design your questionnaire or alter the template.
- If you want to screen your audience do so through the ADL tab.
- When you send a user to the end of a survey through the ADL tab, this is due to:
- A successful survey completion
- Screen out termination
- Profiling termination
- Quality termination
Please note the following changes we’ve made in 2022:
Quality termination is replacing the Disqualification rules feature in the Distribution Link feature. Additionally, screenout and profiling terminations through ADL are replacing the Audience page and screening questions in this feature.
Capabilities and Benefits of the Distribution Link Feature
This feature presents a potent way to collect survey responses; as such, it is another means of survey sampling methods. It has a slew of various capabilities and benefits. The following lists all that researchers can do with the Distribution Link feature:
- Appears as an easy-to-access, sharable link.
- Allows you to hyper-target your target market sample.
- Permits you to reach specific individuals.
- Grants you the power to survey consumers and leads at key moments in their customer journey.
- Enables you to gain consumer opinions about events in their customer experience (CX) while they’re fresh on their minds.
- Allows you to understand what customers don’t like or where you went wrong as these events are still occurring.
- Gives you access into the minds of specific people, at specific times in their CX.
- Makes it possible to ask consumers about your company, specifically, their experience with it, as opposed to more general questions about their thoughts about your niche and cultural climate.
- Brings you insights from key stakeholders and players in your industry and certain companies.
- Provides an alternative survey sampling approach you can use alongside RDE sampling, allowing you to conduct comparative analyses between the two sets of data.
Methods and Campaigns to Use with the Distribution Link Feature
The Distribution Link feature opens doors to conducting several key market research campaigns. It also augments your survey deployment by providing more methods of sending your surveys. This means you are not limited to sending the surveys to specific people through a single channel.
Instead, this feature offers far more options to carry out your research campaigns and reap critical data for decision making. As such, it diversifies your options for distributing your surveys, along with enabling you to carry out and refine critical business campaigns.
The following lists the different methods and campaigns you can use with the Distribution Link feature:
- Email Specific Targets
- This serves as the classic method for inviting targeted people to take your survey.
- You ought to email consumers at specific times in their customer buying journey.
- There are various points in the customer journey and sales funnel that are opportune to survey your target market, such as: post-purchase, cart abandonment/ lack of purchase, bounces, email list sign-ups, a discussion with a representative, etc.
- There are several best practices you should use to increase your survey completion rate if you choose to email your targets.
- Social Media survey invitations.
- With the Distribution Link feature, you can copy/paste the link to the survey you want to deploy across any social media channel.
- This way, you can compare visitors from social media with other means of extracting data, whether it is with other Distribution LInk methods or via RDE sampling.
- B2B Feedback via B2B surveys
- You can gain critical insights with your business clients, vendors and partners to smooth various contracts, processes, integrations and other business dealings.
- With this feature, you can contact these entities directly, so you’ll know exactly who has provided answers to your survey.
- Create this survey type with the correct B2B survey questions.
- Content Marketing Strategy campaigns
- With RDE sampling, you cannot reach out to specific site users that visited and interacted with your website and its content.
- With the Distribution Link feature, you can survey people who have interacted with your content, are subscribed to your newsletter, visit your site regularly, have signed up for a mailing list, etc.
- The link allows you to attach your brand and its experience to the survey, which is also useful for brand visibility.
- Demand Generation campaigns
- If you do not want to directly mention your survey in social media or email messages/campaigns, you can still use the Distribution Link in your landing pages.
- This provides a more indirect way to access your survey, however, a landing page can provide an in-depth explanation, or a bulleted list describing your survey.
- Use CTAs in your landing pages to link to your Distribution Link survey.
- Employee Feedback Survey Campaigns
- Send surveys to your team only, or even specific departments with various employee-facing surveys.
- Use the employee satisfaction survey or the eNPS survey to gauge employee fulfillment, happiness and how likely they are to recommend working at your organization.
- Keep burnout at bay with the employee burnout survey.
- Recognize high-performing and hard-working employees with the employee recognition survey.
How to Use the Feature
- Create your questionnaire
- Select if you want to ask a question and screen the respondents (for profiling, quality, or screener) through the ADL.
- The Link Settings page is combined with the Share page title :
- Set up maximum responses if need be.
- Allow multiple responses from the same respondent.
- Select if you want to be informed of new responses.
- Set an expiration date for your survey.
- Add a custom “thank you” message.
- Select what will occur when a respondent adds a complete
- Send them to the Pollfish homepage.
- Send them to the results.
- Add custom redirect links.
- The results will be the same as regular ones, with the ability to delete a response.
Passthrough Parameters
This is a new implementation for 2022. In conjunction with the redirect URLs, we now support passthrough parameters. This feature allows researchers to pass different identifiers and parameters through the distribution entry link and redirect URL’s for each respondent or a batch of respondents. All parameters are also saved and are available at the XLS export.
Passthrough parameters allow you to pass information to and from a website by simply adding, or appending, specific information to the end of a URL.
You can append as many parameters as you want to your survey link.So what is their purpose in the context of market research? They enable researchers to pass different identifiers, AKA, parameters through survey URLs. The respondents then retrieve them through the redirect URLs.
They are predominantly used to track and match a respondent with a certain response. In Pollfish, you append the user ID at the entry URL and retrieve it at the redirect URL.
By doing so, you can match a respondent profile from the Pollfish respondent pool with a response on a Distribution Link survey.
Personalizing Your Survey Campaigns
Personalization is crucial in marketing and market research and with the Distribution Link feature, you have the option of personalizing your survey to its targeted respondents. You may know exactly who you seek to target if you’re setting up a B2B survey with a client, vendor or partner.
Or, if a customer on your website provides their key identifying details, such as their name, location, email address and more, this also gives you an avenue for personalization. You can then set up a personalized survey and send it to specific individuals with the Distribution Link.The key is to use a strong online survey platform like Pollfish, which now arms you with this link feature that makes it easy to make your own survey in only three steps. With the Distribution Link feature, Pollfish empowers your market research and general research campaigns more than ever before.
New Demographic and Targeting Criteria on Pollfish
New Demographic and Targeting Criteria on Pollfish
We're constantly innovating our market research platform to equip you with strong survey research methods and the best survey experience for your respondents.
The first step to creating a survey in Pollfish is selecting your target audience. However, choosing a target audience can be a challenge if you’re unsure which segments are available or how to get started.
To ensure you’re reaching the right respondents, we’ve provided a full list of all the ways you can segment and select your target audience.
Targeting by Gender
- Male
- Female
- Gender Quotas
- Other
We've updated the Gender targeting filter on the Audience page. The Gender filter now includes a new choice — "Other'' — a non-binary gender option.
The option will not be preselected. if the researcher enables it. It has no additional cost, much like the 16-17 age range. Thus, the maximum price of the gender filter is also not affected. If your results include respondents identifying themselves as ''Other,'' post-stratification will not be available on the results page
The researchers can select the ''Other'' option along with making quotas in the gender filter.
Targeting by Age Range
- Six preset age groups (16-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-44, 54+)
- Specific Age groups (Min/Max)
- Age Group Quotas
Your survey begins with age and gender targeting included.
Targeting by Geolocation
- Country (over 160 countries available)
- City
- Region/ State
- Radius (from physical location)
- Residential Postal Code
- US Postal Code*
- US Census Region*
- US Census Division*
- US Congressional District*
- US DMA*
*Available in United States only
Residential Postal Code
This filter will be based on the data you collect through our demographic portion of the survey (at the demographic info collection section in the screener). Hence, the respondents will declare their location in response to the demographic question of ''What is your zip code?'' since the filter will be global originally.
In addition, we allow researchers to target either by residential postal codes only or by the other geolocation criteria available on the Audience page. This includes targeting by respondents based on their country, city, radius, zip code, etc.
You can contact Pollfish to enable Residential Postal codes on your account.
Targeting by Demographic Criteria
Pollfish asks each respondent to complete a profile in advance of taking their survey and uses rolling profiling to ensure that answers are up-to-date. Targeting can be used to reach people meeting any of the following criteria.
Marital Status:
- Single
- Married
- Divorced
- Living with Partner
- Separated
- Widowed
- Prefer not to say
Number of Children:
- None
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six or more
- Prefer not to say
Education:
- Middle School
- High School
- Vocational/ Technical College
- University
- Post-Graduate
Employment:
- Employed for wages
- Self-employed
- Unemployed and looking for work
- Unemployed but not currently looking
- Homemaker
- Student
- Military
- Retired
- Unable to Work
- Other
Career:
- Agriculture Forestry Fishing or Hunting
- Arts and Entertainment or Recreation
- Broadcasting
- Construction
- Education
- Finance and Insurance
- Government and Public Administration
- Health and Social Assistance
- Homemaker
- Hotel and Food Services
- Information—Other
- Information—Services and Data
- Legal Services
- Manufacturing—Computer and Electronics
- Manufacturing—Other
- Military
- Hotel and Food Services
- Processing
- Publishing
- Real Estate, Rental, or Leasing
- Religious
- Retail
- Scientific or Technical Services
- Software
- Telecommunications
- Transportation and Warehousing
- Energy/ Utilities/ Oil and Gas
- Wholesale
- Advertising
- Automotive
- Consulting
- Fashion/ Apparel
- Human Resources
- Market Research
- Marketing/ Sales
- Shipping/ Distribution
- Personal Services
- Security
- Other
Race/ Ethnicity:
- Arab
- Asian
- Black
- White
- Hispanic
- Latino
- Multiracial
- Other
- Prefer not to Say
Household Income:
- Lower I
- Lower II
- Middle I
- Middle II
- High I
- High II
- High III
- Prefer Not To Say
Household income mapping varies by country. To see how this breaks down, see the full list under household income criteria by country.
Number of Employees
- One
- 2-5
- 6-10
- 11-25
- 26-50
- 51-100
- 101-250
- 251-500
- 501-1000
- 1001-5000
- 5000+
- I don’t work
- Prefer not to say
Organization Role
- Owner or Partner
- President/ CEO/ Chairperson
- C-Level Executive
- Middle Management
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Chief Technical Officer (CTO)
- Senior Management
- Director
- HR Manager
- Supply Manager
- Project Management
- Business Administrator
- Supervisor
- Administrative/ Clerical
- Craftsman
- Foreman
- Technical Staff
- Sales Staff
- Buyer/ Purchasing Staff
- Other non-management staff
- Prefer not to say
Targeting by Mobile Device Criteria
OS Platform
- Android
- iOS
- Web
- Windows Phone
Manufacturer
- Acer
- Apple
- Blackberry
- Carrefour
- Samsung
- ..and more. (Due to our rapidly refreshing audience, it’s best to type the name of the manufacturer you are looking for into the dropdown search for the most up-to-date list of who we support)
Mobile Carrier
- AT&T
- B-Mobile (BT)
- Bell
- China Mobile
- T-Mobile
- Telstra
- Tesco
- Softbank
- Sprint
- Verizon
- Vodafone
- ..and more. (Due to our rapidly refreshing audience, it’s best to type the mobile carrier you are looking for into the dropdown search for the most up-to-date list of who we support)
Pollfish offers 3 screening questions to help you define your audience even further. You can also use these to narrow in on specific behaviors, beliefs, or motivations of your target audience. Be sure to check out our post on how to use screening questions effectively to get the most out of them.
Once you have selected your targeting criteria, you’ll see a preview of your audience makeup on the right side of your dashboard, along with an estimated time to completion. Review how to set up targeting with our video to get started.
https://vimeo.com/304695551
What is a MaxDiff Analysis? The New Best-Worst Scaling Feature
What is a MaxDiff Analysis? The New Best-Worst Scaling Feature
How to Benefit from Pollfish A/B Test Results & Exports
How to Benefit from Pollfish A/B Test Results & Exports
There are various ways researchers can benefit from Pollfish A/B test results and exports, as the Pollfish platform supports different A/B testing capabilities. These include both monadic A/B testing and sequential A/B testing.
At Pollfish, we’re thrilled to offer product features that exist outside the span of surveys alone, allowing our platform to deliver a truly all-encompassing market research experience. As you know, there are all kinds of market research techniques, which include both primary and secondary market research.
You can form primary market research campaigns via surveying your target market, or by creating A/B tests on any topic of your choice, whether it is for an ad campaign or product development.
It is therefore no surprise that 77% of companies use A/B testing on their website and 71% of companies do so monthly.
This article explains how to use and benefit from A/B testing results and exports on the Pollfish platform.
A/B Testing Results Dashboard
Both the Monadic and Sequential A/B testing results are displayed in separate blocks in the Pollfish dashboard. There, researchers can preview the contents of each A/B testing campaign.
You can use concept shortcuts to filter the results page, isolating the concepts’ audience, along with the question information you seek. While navigating down the questions included in the A/B test, the concept shortcuts remain sticky so that you can access their content easily.
Each question included in a Monadic or Sequential A/B test is presented with concept attributes that accompany the question. You can switch the view of the question results, between concept-focused or answer-focused tables, wherever applicable.
To assist you in simplifying the results of Likert scale questions, our report comes from the Top 2 Box score and Bottom 2 Box scores, which are at the Single selection and Matrix Single selection questions. These are in both the tables and the charts.
The Top 2 Box score is the sum of the number of responses that originate from the first two answers, whereas the Bottom 2 Box score is the sum of the number of responses that are derived from the last 2 answers.
Slider and numeric open-ended questions are presented with a box plot diagram, per concept.
A boxplot is a standardized way of displaying the distribution of data based on a five-number summary (“minimum”, first quartile (Q1), median, third quartile (Q3), and “maximum”). It shows you about your outliers and what their values are.
It can also reveal if your data is symmetrical, how tightly your data is grouped, along with if and how your data is skewed.
A/B Testing Exports
All A/B test exports come through with concepts’ information.
Concept information is included in the form of PDF, Excel, CSV and SPSS exports. In the near future, Pollfish will include concepts in an export of Crosstabs.
Recently, Pollfish has added a new type of Excel export, the Comparison export, in which you can view and compare statistics on different questions for all the concepts side by side. This file is available once the A/B test gets completed, and is offered with post stratified data if applicable.
The Top 2 Box score is also available in the exports section for Single and Matrix Single selection questions.
If you have an Elite plan and use a BQ integration, you will receive the concepts’ information for each response, from the data you export.
Driving the Best A/B Testing Campaigns
A/B testing campaigns help drive the success of all kinds of business campaigns, whether they are product, ad, or topically focused. In order to reap the benefits of A/B tests, you’ll need a platform that offers optimal A/B test exports and results.
You’ll also need to refer to other considerations when choosing a strong online market research platform. These include selecting a top-tier mobile-first platform, as the mobile space continues to dominate and no one wants to participate in research campaigns on a poorly constructed mobile environment.
Your market research platform should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to disqualify low-quality data and offer a broad range of survey and question types.
Additionally, it should also allow you to reach anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature. This feature will allow you to send your survey to specific consumers, instead of solely deploying them across a vast network.
With a market research platform that offers all of these offerings, you’ll be able to continuously measure and improve on a wide variety of business campaigns, including sales and marketing and beyond.
How to Analyze the Conjoint Analysis Feature on the Pollfish Platform
How to Analyze the Conjoint Analysis Feature on the Pollfish Platform
We covered the critical question of what is conjoint analysis, explaining its utility, especially in the product development and customer development space. A previous article has also discussed how to build a Conjoint Analysis survey on the Pollfsh online survey platform.
With those insights in mind, it’s crucial to learn how to analyze the Conjoint Analysis feature, which is choice-based on the Polfish platform. You can do so by familiarizing yourself with its different data visualizations, which adequately provide data for decision making.
This article expounds on how to analyze a conjoint analysis feature on the Pollfish market research platform.
Generating Insights from the Conjoint Analysis in Your Dashboard
You can easily generate the insights you’ll need to understand your conjoint analysis in the Pollfish dashboard. To access this feature, simply visit your survey results page and remain on the Conjoint Analysis block. No visualizations will appear until you have collected four responses.
In the Conjoint Analysis block, you will see three graphs: the Attribute importance chart, the Level Utilities chart and the Distribution of Level Preferences chart and a Ranked list of product alternatives as preferred by customers.
Check out this preview of the results page:
https://www.loom.com/share/745f0240ef1c4b879c6e9bc5db6db3a7
The Attribute Relative Importance Graph
This graph displays the influence an attribute has when the respondent selects their preferred alternative. The higher the percentage, the more influential it is in the decision-making process of the potential consumers.
Assuming a survey with 3 attributes tested and None of the above options enabled, the Brand is the most influential attribute relative to the Colour and Price which is the least influential attribute (as displayed below).
This chart shows how strongly the variations of attributes affect customers' choice, but only for the levels that you chose in the design.
Level Utilities
This allows you to dive deeper to understand what specific levels within an attribute drive customers' choice. Each graph displays the measurement of preference for the levels of an attribute. Level utilities are calculated based on the average preference scores for each level. The higher the percentage, the higher the influence of the level at the customer's decision to select a product alternative.
Distribution of Level Preferences Graph
This visualization displays the measurement of the probability that a level would be selected over another, if all other attributes were held constant. The higher the percentage a level has, the higher it was preferred within the levels of the attribute by respondents.
Willingness to pay
Willingness to pay is the maximum price a customer is willing to pay for a product or service (ie. how much users are ready to pay for an upgrade from level A to level B, in addition to the price they are already paying now).
Each attribute has its own chart, where values represent monetary values. By using the chart and selecting a different baseline level, you can compare how much respondents are willing to pay for an upgrade or a downgrade to another level.
Willingness to pay is a chart available only for Conjoint surveys containing an attribute of Price type.
In the example below, the baseline level for “Perfume” attribute is set to “Floral”. From the graph, we can understand that users are willing to pay $2.05 more for “Lavender”, whereas for the “Green Citrus” they are willing to pay $0.77 less than for “Floral”.
You can change the baseline level for the specific attribute to “Ocean” to compare how this performs against the other levels, by clicking on the relevant bar. This will convert “Ocean” to the baseline level, where we can see that users are willing to pay more only for the “Free of perfume”, whereas for all other levels of “Perfume” they are willing to pay less than they would for “Floral”.
Ranked List of Product Alternatives
This table displays how the product alternatives are ranked, based on the level utilities. The first ones are the most preferred among the respondents.
You can apply the results of the Conjoint Analysis feature through filters. Just use the filters with the selected demographic criteria and to the rest of the demographics gathered.
The information in the graphs gets recalculated to provide insights only for the filtered audience, as long as there are at least four remaining responses. Post-stratification is not available on the Conjoint Analysis feature.
